Production Tracking - Don't Be a Dry Monkey

Put a few monkeys in a cage with a ladder that has bananas on top. One monkey immediately goes for the bananas.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share

Cold water sprays on the others.  

Field Productivity: Don't Be a Dry Monkey. Know the Why behind production, know the how of troubleshooting and know the when and the who for escalation of production problems.

One more monkey might try to go for the bananas again after they dry off and forget.  The cold water sprays the others again.  

All of these original monkeys are now conditioned to not go for the bananas.  

Replace one of the monkeys and the new one immediately goes for the bananas but the others stop him because they don’t want to get sprayed with cold water again.  

Replace another of the original monkeys and the pattern repeats itself.  

Replace all of the original monkeys until no monkey has ever been sprayed by water yet the group think conditioning remains so no monkey will ever be allowed to go for the bananas.  

This behavior keeps us safe in some ways but in many more ways it simply stops learning and innovation.  

When it comes to production tracking don’t let anyone on your team be a dry monkey.  Always encourage learning and smart risk taking by leading the way to find a better way.  


Improving Labor Productivity Workshop


Production Tracking - Don't Be a Dry Monkey
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Production Tracking - Don't Be a Dry Monkey
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Retirement Onboarding - Success & Risk
Nearly all of the 6 common exit strategies for contractors require the business to continue being successful for the outgoing owner to get paid. There are a couple of things that can be done to help ensure everything stays on track.
Scoreboards & Scorecards: Talent Development + Business Results
Once someone understands the basics of the task to be done, nothing will improve performance faster than actionable and timely feedback. People align around common scoreboards (think sports) while more detailed scorecards guide decisions and development.
Situational Awareness - Learning to See
It is critical for project teams to develop a model of the project in their minds so that they can quickly make the thousands of decisions required to keep the project on-track. This is called Situational Awareness and includes three basic layers.